Elle #1

I gave up reading women's magazine at some point during grad school. After years of following Vogue, Mademoiselle, Glamour, Self, and Elle - My adored and beloved Elle.

Most of the time they were trying to sell me stuff, not just in the ads but everywhere from the reviews to the articles to the fashion spreads. Every issue said:

1. Y'know, you don't look as good as these 17 year old toothpicks. Poor you. Buy this cream/shadow/tonic/drink/gel/ballgown/etc. It's all you need to be beautiful.

2. Y'know, you don't look as good as these 17 year old toothpicks here's a new diet/exercise/surgery/treatment you really need to try.

3. Men. You can't live with 'em, you're nothing without them. Here's ten things you can do in bed or on the road or at home or on a trapeze or in conversation to make him love you. And it would help if you looked like a 17 year old toothpick. (see 1 and 2)

All this and so much more.

The other day my mom bought an issue of Elle and I read it. Like an Atkin's dieter left alone with a box of chocolate donuts.

There was an interview with Caitlin Flanagan. I have never read an article by Flanagan. So allow me to expound in utter ignorance. From what I can tell from the interview she is an excellent writer who abhors feminists and has a knack for making women feel like shit for not being good wives and mothers.

At one point the interviewer, Laurie Abraham, calls home and finds out that the pet gerbil has died and her older daughter is sad about it. She is in LA to interview Flanagan while her children are in Brooklyn. What can she do? She would like to be there to comfort her but she is working. She tell Flanagan about it and Ms. Flanagan is very comforting about the whole thing telling Abraham that her daughter will grow from the experience.

The interview goes on and at one point Abraham asks Flanagan if she still believes that "When a mother works, something is lost." To which Flanagan replies softly, "The gerbil's dead, and you're here."

If it was me, it would have taken every muscle in my body to keep me from slapping her. And I would have regretted not slapping her for the rest of my life.

Which must be her appeal to the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly. The ability to comfort and then stab with a dagger is a classic - she's that the toxic friend I once had who knew how to slyly yank the rug out from under me.

My brilliant and wonderful mother who stayed home and raised me, did so to the mantra of "Be independent. Have a career." In her day, career women and the intelligentsia made her feel like shit for staying home and not having a career. And here we are 30 years later and Caitlin Flanagan gets to turn the tables on them.

Bully for her.

So.

When are we going to stop making each other feel like shit?

Dale Peck makes a comment in his book "Hachet Jobs" (a deliciously nasty book of book reviews) about how political activism seeks to make itself unnecessary. Activism seeks to change hearts, minds, behaviors, and laws. The success of a movement is in the transition from the radical to the commonplace. But then what? On to the next change. In the case of feminism, people keep wanting to declare it to be a mistake and insist that we go back. We fight the same fights.

Somewhere in the critique of the choices of my mother and Flanagan's critique of feminists there must be a deeper synthesis than to yell from one side "Get a Job" and from the other "Take care of your own." One that could take us forward rather than endlessly tearing each other down.